Journalist Defends Metallica's 'Lulu:' 'It Has Some of Best Drum Sounds From Lars Since 'Black Album''

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Posted on Mar 07, 2014 11:45 am

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In an interesting column titled "In Defense of Their Good Name," one of colleagues at Metal Insider took a defensive stance towards the infamous Metallica/Lou Reed collaboration "Lulu."

"'Lulu' is fundamentally not a Metallica album," the journalist instantly stressed. "It is a Lou Reed album. Production duties were split between Reed and his long time collaborator Hal Wilner. The music was not solely performed by Metallica but by Reed, other members of his solo band, and a string section. Metallica had a heavy hand in the creation of the album, but were still part of a larger whole and the single worst entity to be evangelizing the project.

"The amount of false expectations set up by Metallica were staggering," the article reads. "A punchline before anyone heard one note, 'Lulu' was an album destined to fail. Being based on a German play adapted by Reed with random sounding lyrical phrases made an already easy target for ridicule come across as a fully formed SNL parody."

Focusing on the music, the author explained, "The truth is 'Lulu' is a fantastic Lou Reed album which utilizes Metallica to varying degrees of success. At its worst, the incongruous nature of the music reinforces why people thought this collaboration was a terrible idea. At its best, the muscular riffing of Metallica adds a wonderful escalation to the sublime soundscapes created by Reed's narration and the Velvet Underground-esque string drones."

Noting that James Hetfield's vocals come as the record's critical flaw, the report continues, "Trying to be a hyper-masculine Flavor Flav-style hype man to Reed's understated vocals is a mood killer. I hate cilantro and try to avoid it in any meal. A stray taste of cilantro in my burrito won't ruin my whole dinner, but it will ruin that bite. James Hetfield's vocals are the cilantro sprinkled on top of 'Lulu.'"

As far as the good parts go, the author singled out parts of "The View," "Dragon," "Cheat on Me" and "Junior Dad," explaining, "The greatest successes on the album are when Metallica actively work to complement Reed's songwriting. A great example is the Black Sabbath doom riff playing over string drones in 'The View.' In the second half of 'Dragon' the music shifts from avant-garde rock into classic Metallica riffing and the epic scale of the arrangement sounds genuinely earned."

Summing it all up, the article praises Lars Ulrich's drum performance as one of his finest in over two decades. "So in the end we have a great Lou Reed solo record with one of the world's greatest metal bands backing him up," the conclusion reads.

"You have some of the best drum sounds you've heard from Lars since the 'Black Album.'More than half the record is extremely successful which is a higher ratio than a lot of other later-era Lou Reed records. There is a lot of great music on Lulu and as the snarky social media and blog comments fade into obscurity I hope people will be able to start hearing the album for what it is, and not what it falsely represents."

Did you ever give "Lulu" a full-on listening and an objective review? Let us know if you agree with the journalist's stance in the comments.

It kinda feels like the 'review' I gave (Re)Load back in the mid '90's with the exception that Lulu actually is only for Lou Reed fans... and I think that this is where the problem arises; it's not for Metallica fans, who were all expecting that Lou Reed would've taken over James' vocal duties in an awesome mash-up of two worlds.
It seems that even the most hardcore Metallica fans have forgotten how much James loves Lou Reed and if they'd remembered that, they could've seen what kind of album was about to come out.
I think it's part of a problem where people don't want a band to change their writing and/or sound... and that's just what Metallica have been doing since 1991's 'Black Album'.
(Re)Load put more emphasis on 'the song', St. Anger was very experimental in sound, Death Magnetic was an attempt to bring the 'Anger' and 'Load' closer together.
Metallica tries to progress and find new inspiration instead of repaeting themself over and over into oblivion, and regardless of the hardcore fans (though, if you only like 4 out of 10 official albums... how on earth can you call yourself 'hardcore'?) they've extended their fansbase throughout that period and are still one of the most famous/influential 'metal' bands on the planet, so something must be done right.
So, in conclusion I must say that I don't listen to Lulu as a Metallica album, but as Lou Reed album with a different band backing him... But that band could've been any band. It doesn't make my Metallica bells jingle, so to speak.

I understand all of that, but there are still loads of issues with the recording of the record alone, even if the songs themselves were good. It's just sloppy, and you can practically hear where they made edits.

Yeah, well said.
Also, people will never be satisfied. If Metallica does something they have done before, people will bitch about it (because they have heard it before - or they think Metallica is just trying to please their fans) and if they do something new, people will bitch about it (because it doesn't sound like Master of Puppets).

I just went back to St. Anger to check this out and I can hear the snare but it sounds really sloppy and loose. I don't know how they recorded it but now that I actually listen closely the snare sounds like utter shit in that song, can't be bothered to listen to the whole album right now.

Agreed I hate when people expect a band to have the same sound throughout their whole careers. The reason St.Anger is one of my favorite albums is the fact that the drums sound so different the whole album has a very cool raw/angry/gritty feel to it.

Really? That's funny... because I've used my snare drums with the snares off many times and they've never yielded a piercing, obnoxious clang that sounds like someone thwacking an oil drum with an aluminum rod. I've even played the 6.5x14 Lars Ulrich signature diamond plate snare (the type he used on St. Anger) on a couple of occasions, and it does not sound at all like the tone on that record. Snares off or not, the tone on that album is the result of studio manipulation. It is not "raw" by any stretch of the imagination.

Kill 'Em All had pretty good drum sounds. Ride the Lighting and Master of Puppets were his best.. in the ears of this listener at least. When he adopted the clicking, typewriter bass drum tone on ...And Justice For All, it was all downhill from there.

"'Lulu' is fundamentally not a Metallica album," the journalist instantly stressed. "It is a Lou Reed album."
No it isn't, to you and all the other dumbasses out there. IT'S A LOU REED AND METALLICA ALBUM! It says so on the spine of the CD, throughout the liner notes, in the copyright of the album, on iTunes, on Amazon. You have to be a complete idiot to deny this.

It is hilarious to me how much Metallica fans hate this album. I honestly feel bad for Metallica because they can't try anything new without their fans bashing the shit out of it. So now they probably feel compelled to write another cd that sounds exactly like what they have been releasing for the past 25 or so years. I honestly hope they keep trying to release music that falls outside of the sound they have established, because there is nothing worse than a band who keeps releasing the same cd over and over again.

Slayer changed, though. They made a Nu-Metal album with Diabolus in Musica and then resigned themselves to being a second-rate Thrash band since then. Their current music is nothing like Show No Mercy or Hell Awaits.

I don't know, I mean Nile is one of my favorite bands ever and they basically release the same CD over and over. I'm pretty ok with people not changing the core of their sound, or if they do, calling it a different band name. They don't need the name "Metallica" on something like lulu.

First off, I don't know about other Metallica fans, but I hate this album because the musicianship in it is simply horrifying. The whole sound just sucks on the album, and all those 10 minute songs mix together and sound like the same track. Secondly, bands SHOULD go off on a different path musically, which is something Metallica has done since Load/Reload, but they also need to revive that old sound their fans fell in love with them for in the first place, instead of just doing whatever the hell they want too. That is, of course, if they want to keep a solid fan-base.

Well don't ever become a musician as a career then, because your business plan is all wrong. A band most certainly want's to please the audience, they are the one buying your music. If you only make music for yourself odds are not many people will like it, which drastically reduces any profit you will make. Take a look at bands like Nickelback, they ****ing suck for most people that like diverse music; however they appeal to radio rock lovers which is the majority of music listeners. This is why they have platinum albums and sell out stadiums even though almost everyone on this page probably hates them.

Not everybody makes music because they want to be famous. Have you ever thought that making your own music could be fun? Metallica started playing together because it was fun. Their image is all about not caring about what other people think about them.
If music was all about the money, nobody would experiment because most of the time experimenting doesn't give you lots of album sales. The only genre would be mainstream pop.

And I feel bad for Metallica because they can't try anything new due to the fact they simply don't have the skill to make anything other than early 80s Thrash. They were starting to fall behind even half-way through Master of Puppets, anyway. It doesn't matter that LuLu is different than their previous stuff, most of the riffs on the album are mix between crappy St. Anger rejects and mediocre Sludge riffs. Half the reason this album even gets defended is because of Lou Reed and Metallica's name on it. If any other band released it, it wouldn't have even seen the light of day.
A band has the right to do whatever they want, but trash is trash, and no amount of "BANDS' RIGHTS" is going to change that. Especially for a band who started their career in response to all the crappy Glam bands they vocally hated on.